IN THE days before the washing machine, most of White Knight laundry’s customers were members of the public. Now 100 years later, that market is returning with big potential for growth.
White Knight, originally White King when it was formed in 1904 in Kilburn, moved to another west London site 30 years later, and added laundries in Woking in 1970 and Eastbourne in 1990.
But the most significant development in White Knight’s century of existence has been the invention of the washing machine.
The arrival of the twin tub marked the start of a long decline in demand for domestic laundry and gradually the market reduced to a trickle.
But times had only partly changed. The typical household of the 1960s and 70s still meant a wife at home and a husband at work.
But in the 21st Century with two partners commonly at work, the domestic need for laundry has come back as people want to free up their leisure time.
White Knight commercial manager Robert Adams said: “Generally the housewife was at home, and doing the washing and tumble drying was not a problem. Now, virtually all houses are empty during the day because they both go out to work and there is a need for saving time.
“Laundry and dry cleaning is on the up again and the domestic business is growing.”
There are now two clear divisions for White Knight, a promising domestic trade turning over £2.3m and its regular – but also growing – business to business (B2B) operation with a turnover of around £6.5m.
In planning its relaunch into the domestic market, White Knight found most households spent four-and-a-half hours a week on laundry.
In Reading and Guildford, 22% of people said they were likely to use a home laundry and dry cleaning delivery service while a further 40% would consider it.
So, three years ago, White Knight began a pilot franchise scheme for a home and workplace collection and delivery service for both laundry and dry cleaning. It proved highly successful and there are now nine franchises around the south east.
But although turnover is growing, White Knight can claim only 0.5% penetration.
That, said managing director Colin Dawe, suggests a target of 1% – 2% penetration was not unrealistic.
“We’ve got nine franchises and we are looking for another nine this year. The domestic business is probably exceeding the business to business in terms of growth.”
Existing domestic customers will soon be transferred to the franchised service which targets a more upmarket customer.
Mr Dawe added: “A lot of our customers are in their 70s and 80s. What we are doing now is profiling a completely different type of customer, the ABC1 households, the flat dwellers, relatively affluent people who are short of time.”
White Knight is soon to close its last retail dry cleaning shop in Woking, marking a complete switch to the franchised home and workplace delivery for all its domestic laundry and the firm is now part of the British Franchise Association.
Franchisees serve those customers at evenings and weekends for what Mr Dawe called ‘serious rewards’. “They’ve got to be hungry business people,” he said.
Mike Sadler, a former employee who runs the Reading franchise doubled his initial £70,000 turnover in one year.
Mr Adams said: “That’s really encouraging but we have not set our sites massively this year, we want 10% growth.”
The franchises are kept to strict geographical areas to avoid overlapping. Franchise holders are allocated postcode regions but all are still in White Knight’s south east heartland where all 300 staff are employed.
Now though, such has been the success of the franchises, three approaches have been made from laundries interested in expanding the service north.
White Knight is considering creating a master franchise to take the service into more parts of the UK. The company feels well positioned to cope with any new competition.
Mr Dawe said: “Anybody who comes in is going to be two years behind where we are, if they come in now.”
Domestic laundry is carried out at Woking while B2B laundry goes to Eastbourne.
The years of decline in domestic laundry helped White Knight establish a niche in the B2B market.
Hotels, restaurants and workplaces, some with their own laundries, were beginning to see the benefits of outsourcing their laundry towards the end of the 1960s.
At around the same time White Knight took over the former Reading and Caversham laundry and continued to expand into the business scene where it supplied linen which it then cleaned, pressed and returned.
But in a fiercely competitive industry, White Knight now sidesteps the one-size-fits-all approach, instead focusing on supplying exclusive linen to what Mr Dawe calls ‘the more discerning hotels and restaurants – those who want to differentiate their linen from their competitors’.
It targets the country manor rather than the budget hotel chain.
White Knight barcodes items and ensures each venue gets only its own returned after each wash.
A telesales team generates around 160 appointments a month and the B2B database has over 13,000 customers of which around 5,000 will be supplied most weeks.
Though White Knight prides itself on its quality, research into what business customers thought was most important provided an intriguing answer.
White Knight surveyed what it calls housekeepers, (those concerned with the day to day running of hotels) and found getting deliveries on time was the number one priority. Quality was second.
Mr Adams said: “This was an education in how they had been let down in the past by other firms.”
It now plans a similar questionnaire for restaurants.
The Reading site, rebuilt after the original building dating from 1881 was destroyed by fire 16 years ago, is now the company headquarters, admin offices, a warehouse and distribution centre. A relocated state-of-the-art Eastbourne site took over Reading’s laundry work in 2001.
Now though, the site, on prime development land close to town, the river Thames and parkland, is too big and White Knight has decided developers could make more lucrative use of the 1.4 acres.
White Knight is looking for a building of 4,000 sq ft of offices and 6-8,000 sq ft of warehouse elsewhere in Reading. A priority is to stay within easy reach of its 40 or so workers in Reading.
If the planning process is smooth Mr Dawe said he hopes to be operating from a new site by early 2005.
Options are very much still open. The firm owns the freehold at Caversham but has yet to decide if that is a preferred option for the new site or whether to rent.
Big investment has gone into the company website to put it high up on web searches and White Knight plans to stay a market leader in its niche B2B market while developing ahead of any potential rival in personal laundry.
Mr Dawe said: “We want to be a significant dominant force in personal laundry in the south east.”
Key issues facing White Knight:
*Expanding into other parts of the UK
*Finding a new site in Reading
*Whether to rent or buy
*Staying a market leader
From ic Berkshire